Survivors tell of horror as Italy probes air crash

As the second engine of the small propeller plane stopped, Roberto Fusco rushed to put on his life jacket and brace for an emergency landing. Then the ATR-72 plunged into the choppy waters off the Sicilian coast, its nose and tail snapping off on impact.

“As soon as we heard the crash the water rushed in,” Fusco, 24, said Sunday, a day after the Tuninter flight went down while carrying Italian vacationers to Tunisia. “It was very fast. There was no preparation.”

Fusco was one of 23 survivors on the flight. At least 13 died in the crash, and authorities searched by air and sea Sunday for three more people believed missing.

Standing with bandaged arms and legs outside the Villa Sofia hospital, Fusco said he unclipped his seat belt, took a deep breath and swam through the frigid water to the surface. Another passenger helped him and his girlfriend onto a wing, where they waited to be rescued.

Also on the wing was the plane’s pilot, identified by the Tunisian airline as Chafik Gharbi. The pilot “was in a terrible state. He had blood all over his face,” Fusco said.

The wreckage was battered by 10-foot waves and strong currents.

At 3:24 p.m. Saturday, Gharbi radioed Rome airport tower officials to report engine trouble and ask permission to make an emergency landing in Palermo. Sixteen minutes later, he told tower officials he was ditching in the sea because he could not reach the airstrip, officials said.

Some survivors said the engines went silent, one after the other, in the seconds before the aircraft went down in the Mediterranean 10 miles off Cape Gallo on Sicily’s north coast with 34 passengers and five crew members.

Survivors said there was panic and confusion in the moments before the plane crash-landed.

Fusco said the co-pilot, in faltering Italian, warned passengers of the emergency landing minutes before the plane hit the water. He said he had to find a second life jacket after he found the one under his seat was missing a strap.

The flight had departed from Bari, southern Italy, for the Tunisian resort of Djerba and was about half full.

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Authorities quickly recovered 13 bodies. Officials said finding the remaining bodies might be difficult because they could be trapped inside part of the plane that was still submerged: both the tail and the nose sank after impact.

Officials investigating the crash inspected the wreckage of the twisted central section of fuselage Sunday after it was hauled ashore at Palermo’s harbor, the wings and engines still attached. But emergency crews had not found the flight data recorder.

Officials said the plane had been in service for about 13 years, had been checked as recently as March without problems, and came from a country — Tunisia — that observes international air safety standards.

“The breakdown of both engines is a completely atypical occurrence,” the head of Italy’s civil aviation agency, Cmdr. Silvano Manera, told The Associated Press.

He said an analysis of the fuel in the plane’s tanks did not detect any impurities. He said a fuel tank leak may have caused the engines to stop, while other officials spoke of a possible mechanical problem in feeding the fuel into the engines.

Italian Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi called for intensified controls for charter planes, saying existing standards needed to be reinforced. Palermo’s chief prosecutor, Piero Grasso, said the incident was clearly a technical breakdown.

The pilot was among five people with serious injuries, suffering a broken vertebra and trauma to the head and chest, said Dr. Mario Re, chief of the intensive care unit at Civic Hospital. But none of those five — three Tunisian crew members and two Italian passengers — had life-threatening injuries, he said.

In a separate ward of the hospital, passenger Rosanna Di Cesare, 36, recounted how she clung to a floating suitcase for 30 minutes before being rescued by a motorboat.

“We were miraculously saved,” Di Cesare told AP from her hospital bed. “Even if I lost everything, I lost nothing.”

She had booked the holiday with her boyfriend, who also was recovering at the hospital. They had not heard anything about the fate of his mother, who was traveling with the couple.

“It was meant to be a relaxing week,” Di Cesare said.